Convair
YF-102 at the Convair assembly plant. October 2, 1953, was the date of
completion for the first airframe.

The primary
mission of the Convair F-102A Delta Dagger was to intercept and destroy
enemy aircraft. It was the world's first supersonic all-weather jet
interceptor and the U.S. Air Force's first operational delta-wing
aircraft.

The Convair
F-106A "Delta Dart" first flew on December 26, 1956.

The
delta-wing Hustler was the first U.S. Air Force supersonic operational
bomber. It made its initial flight on November 11, 1956 and flew
supersonically on December 30, 1956.

Convair had been formed in 1943
from the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft corporations. It formally became
a division of General Dynamics in April 1954, with plants in San Diego and Pomona,
California, and in Fort Worth, Texas, following a stock purchase of the year
before by John Jay Hopkins, president and chief operating officer of General
Dynamics. The Convair division would operate over the next half century
primarily as an independent company under the General Dynamics corporate
umbrella.

General Dynamics had been formed
in 1952 from the Electric Boat Company. In the two years before it acquired
Convair, General Dynamics' sole aircraft manufacturing unit had been Canadair,
a Canadian company. But because U.S. law prevented American aerospace
contracts from being fulfilled outside the United States, General Dynamics had
not been involved in the U.S. aerospace market. With the acquisition of
Convair, General Dynamics could now bid on U.S. aerospace contracts, perhaps
the greatest benefit of the acquisition.

Convair's first large undertaking
as part of General Dynamics was the Model 880 jetliner. In the mid-1950s, the
jetliner age was fast approaching and Convair lagged behind. Boeing and
Douglas Aircraft companies had cornered the long-range jet market, but Convair
believed that the medium-range jetliner market was yet untapped. After meeting
with Howard Hughes of Trans World Airlines, Convair set out to build a
medium-range jetliner to meet TWA's needs. The final design was the Model 880.

The 880 was racked with problems
from the start, as much to do with Hughes' meddling as anything else, and
turned out to be only a few feet shorter than the Douglas DC-8, lumbering
along with four large engines. Despite the plane's shortcomings, Hughes
ordered 30 in June 1956. Hughes also got Convair to sign a one-year exclusive
contract that effectively prohibited sales of the Model 880 to other companies
even though, at the time, Hughes did not have the money to pay for the planes.
This contract allowed Boeing to launch the very successful 720, which United
Airlines ordered, essentially killing the 880. Finally, in December 1960,
after Hughes obtained financing to pay for the 880s, the planes were delivered
to TWA.

Convair also developed a bigger,
more advanced version of the 880, the 990. American Airlines ordered the 990,
but because it fell a few miles-per-hour short of the speed requirement,
American canceled the entire order. Eventually, American relented and ordered
15 planes.

In all, only 102 Model 880/990
airplanes were ordered, and Convair's losses from the series totaled $425
million. It turned out to be the largest loss by a company up to that time in
United States history, surpassing the loss by Ford on the Edsel. The 880/990
series came to be known as "The Flying Edsel."

In 1951, the Air Material Command
of the U.S. Air Force awarded Convair Project MX-1593, a contract to develop
an intercontinental military rocket, later known as an intercontinental
ballistic missile (ICBM). Convair engineer Karl Bossart named the project
"Project Atlas" and Convair began to develop America's first ICBM. However,
the project was not well funded and progressed slowly.

In 1953, the Soviets exploded a
thermonuclear device and were supposedly working on ICBMs to carry uranium and
hydrogen warheads. In reaction to this, in March 1954, the Western Development
Division, a special missile command agency created by the Air Research and
Development Command, awarded Convair its first long-term contract for
engineering and fabrication of an ICBM.

For the Atlas, Convair developed a
new kind of airframe, nicknamed the "gas bag." Made of stainless steel
sections that were thinner than paper, it achieved rigidity through helium
pressurization, similar to the way a football keeps its shape. The powerplant,
contracted to the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation, was a
three-engine design with Rocketdyne responsible for the two booster engines
and Convair responsible for the sustainer engine. Together, the engines
produced more than 360,000 pounds (1.6 kilonewtons) of thrust, equivalent to
about five times the power generated by the Hoover Dam. In comparison with
other missiles of its time, Thor, Redstone, and Titan, Atlas was a rather fat
rocket, ranging from 16 feet (five meters) in diameter at the base to 10 feet
(three meters) at its fuel tank. With its original nose cone, it stood nearly
76 feet (23 meters) tall.

The first configuration of the
Atlas, series A, was used solely for research and development, but the B
series was much closer to operational specifications. On December 18, 1958,
the Atlas 10-B successfully delivered the Project SCORE payload, the world's
first communications satellite, into orbit, becoming the first Atlas rocket to
be used as a space launch vehicle. The subsequent Atlas D, E, and F series
rockets were designed to be used by the Strategic Air Command as ICBMs with a
nuclear payload. The final qualification flight test of the Atlas D, called
"Big Joe," took place on September 9, 1959.

On July 29, 1960, the
Atlas-Mercury One (MA-1) launched, but the rocket exploded roughly one minute
after launch. On February 21, 1961, using a strengthened Atlas rocket, MA-2
was successfully launched and recovered. A few more tests followed. Finally,
on February 20, 1962, aboard Atlas rocket-powered Friendship 7 (MA-6),
the first American astronaut, John Glenn, lifted into orbital flight.

In 1957, General
Dynamics/Astronautics Corporation, which had broken off from and then rejoined
the Convair Division, submitted a proposal to the Air Force to develop the
Centaur, a new space launch vehicle that could lift heavy payloads into orbit.
This vehicle was a high-energy second-stage rocket with a new liquid
hydrogen/liquid oxygen propulsion system that could boost payloads as great as
8,500 pounds (3,856 kilograms) into orbit.

On May 8, 1962, the first Centaur,
developed by the Air Force and assembled at the Convair plant in San Diego,
was launched but exploded 54 seconds after takeoff. NASA's Lewis Research
Center (later the John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field) was assigned
the task of correcting the rocket's problems and, on November 23, 1963, the
first successful launch of the Atlas first stage, Centaur second stage
(Atlas/Centaur) rocket took place.

For the next 30 years, the
Atlas/Centaur rocket would be the U.S. workhorse in space. In May 1966,
Surveyor 1, the first soft lander on the Moon, was launched aboard an
Atlas/Centaur rocket and throughout the 1970s, the Atlas/Centaur rocket was
used for launching probes and fly-by's to other planets, including the
Pioneer 10, which flew to Jupiter. Also planned for use with Space
Shuttle-launched payloads, NASA scrapped that use after the 1986 Challenger
accident due to increased safety concerns.

Meanwhile, while Convair was
developing the Atlas and assembling the Centaur, it was also developing new
fighter jets and bombers. The YF-102A, the first plane using the new "area-rule"
fuselage, first flew in December 1954, and went into production in 1956 as the
F-102A Delta Dagger. The more advanced F-106 Delta Dart (originally the
F-102B) followed and first flew on December 26, 1956. It was capable of
initiating a "zoom climb," arching up 70,000 feet (21,336 meters) in the thin
upper atmosphere to attack hostile bombers. Its air-to-air missiles were
controlled by a digital computer that guided the interceptor to its target
using information from ground equipment until the target was in radar range of
the plane, when the plane's radar would take over. It was produced until 1961.

In 1952, Convair received a
contract to develop a supersonic bomber to succeed the Boeing B-47. The XB-58
Hustler exploited Convair's delta-wing expertise, used four GE J79 engines,
and carried all weaponry in a jettisonable streamlined pod beneath the
fuselage. Most significantly, under the new comprehensive "weapon system"
policy, Convair was responsible for the performance of all systems, including
electronics, weaponry, and subcontracted components.

The XB-58 first flew in November
1956, and entered production at Fort Worth in 1960, becoming the first
supersonic bomber. However, only 116 were ordered due to strategic
reassessments and questions about the aircraft's performance. In 1965, General
Dynamics decided to build all future planes at its Fort Worth location, ending
Convair Division's production of complete airplanes.

The Convair Division continued,
however, to be involved with space and delivered the first Space Shuttle
Orbiter mid-section fuselage to North American Rockwell, producer of the
Orbiter, in 1975. Convair also developed and eventually produced the Tomahawk
cruise missile, which was still in use in 2001.

In 1985, Convair's space program
was split off to form General Dynamics Space Systems Division. In 1987,
Convair began producing the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 fuselage and continued
producing it until late 1995. In 1994, the Aircraft Structure unit was sold to
McDonnell Douglas and in 1996, Convair division operations were discontinued.